Samizdata quote of the day

There is now a large industry of obfuscation designed to protect Muslims from having to grapple with these truths. Humanities and social science departments are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science and other diverse fields, who claim that where Muslim intolerance and violence are concerned, nothing is ever what it seems.

35 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

I suppose that Muslims will soon be demanding the repeal of the right to free speech! Only believing experts will be allowed to publicly utter an opinion. Come to that, quite a few jokes are offensive to some people, so we’ll only be allowed to repeat approved jokes.
Bertie:’I say, Reggie, I’ve got an uncle who can’t meet his creditors.’
Reggie:’I wouldn’t think he’d want to!’
(Boom, boom)
apologies to PG Wodehouse.

I find the whole idea of religion offensive. I find it offensive to human intelligence, to human dignity, to human self-worth. If feeling offended by others’ opinions is a reason to suppress free speech can I ask the Government to arrest all preachers? Come to that I find most politicians offensive – can the Government stop them talking please? And a lot of people on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Round them up!

I find the whole idea of atheism offensive! the very idea that people can claim ‘there is no God!’ is an arrogant one. Ban it all!!!
And ban all religions that aren’t like mine! Let’s get the government to ban all governments, as well!!!
We’re doing well here. Let’s also ban people even thinking evil thoughts, let alone doing them!
What next?

Religion is a leftover from human prehistory where nobody had the faintest idea what was going on. It comes from the hysterical and fearful infancy of our species, and is an infantile attempt to meet our desire for knowledge. Today even the least educated individual knows much more about the natural world than any of the founders of religion which is why most people, save the dregs of our species, are uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.

There is now a large industry of obfuscation designed to protect Muslims from having to grapple with these truths.

I do not agree with the design issue. The purpose of the ‘industry’ is to maintain the prevailing ideology of what is the ruling class in the UK and much of the West. The issues around Muslims provide a focus for the narrative of endless agitprop of ‘community togetherness’, complaints of unlawful discrimination, ‘human rights’ and ‘integration’. Thus news on the BBC in particular contains endless reports, surveys, vox pops, concerns about this or that, whilst there is even a government ‘deradicalisation’ strategy of in effect brainwashing to ‘deprogramme’ fanatics. All of which in some Grauniad reader’s fantasy might then be applied to, say, non-Muslim ‘extremists’ such as, you know, UKIP supporters.

There is no intention to protect Muslims (the vast majority, over 99.99% it seems to me, of whom carry on living peaceful lives as it happens) but the intention is to use the issue as part of the ideological basis for statism, the working class having proved itself to be unreliable supporters of the middle-class nomenklatura that, without a parasitic State, would be impoverished and powerless.

Harris continues to be the only atheist of note to continually grapple with the issue of Islam as a priority since the death of Hitchens. The lack of participation from our other athiest brethren, too busy mocking the vagaries of christianity to deal with the real danger, will haunt us for some time.

At the root of this problem (this “denial ism” about Islam) is a refusal to come to grips with the teaching (the mature teaching – not what he said before he had his own army) and the LIFE (the deeds) of Mohammed.

When a Christian does terrible things (and many Christians have done terrible things) one can correctly say “you have betrayed Jesus”. But when a follower of Mohammed does terrible things they have NOT betrayed Mohammed – because Mohammed both (in his mature teachings) taught terrible things, and DID (or ordered) terrible things himself.

Academics, media types, and the political leadership of the West, refuse to accept the above. And that is a suicidal position for the West to be in.

Fortunately Paul I think a shed load of folks in the west have got the message now, its only the intelligentsia whose heads remain jammed up their arses. The politics will shift when a few more UKIPers get elected and maybe those NF turds big up in Frogland.

Thanks fuck for spellcheckers as I had no bloody idea how to spell intelligentsia, hahaha

One thing to point out to Muslims, defenders of Islam and deniers of Islam, (you know the “ISIS isn’t islamic” idiots), is that they’re all infidels.

It doesn’t matter if your name is George Galloway, Baroness Warsi or Abdul el Hadj Mohammed you are still, to the majority of muslims, an infidel.

This is because of the massive sectarianism of Islam. Although Sunnis account for the majority of muslms, there are a dozen or so separate varieties of Sunni Islam and each one believes that all the others are “doing it wrong” and are therefore infidel. That’s not to mention Shia or Sufi or any of the other dozen or more Islamic sects.

So, as an infidel, the best you can hope for is slavery. More likely these days, having your head sawn off with a rusty knife.

That is complete nonsense. Certainly the former is true, but most moderate Muslims that I know have no such desire at all. I find these ridiculous stereotypes just as foolish as the whole “Islam is a religion of peace” people. How about we deal with the reality of this? The huge majority of westernized Muslims are pretty much the same as the huge majority of westernized other religious people, except that they all wear different funny hats, and read different ridiculous books. The vast majority of westernized Muslims want to go to work, spend time with their family, enjoy their religious communities and live long and happy lives. If that were not true, there would be no peace and security in the west at all.

All these religions are ridiculous anachronisms. But religious temperaments, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish or other, are all tempered and focused through the lens of western secularism which takes the crazy out of all of them… and they all have some form of crazy in them.

I tend to agree with Fraser Orr. As I pointed out in a different discussion, most of the Peshmerga fighting the Islamic State are muslims. They are just not political muslims. Call them ‘bad’ Muslims, if you wish (by which I mean non-observant), but they are nominal muslims. Indeed I think Sam Harris has it right on that score. We need to provide intellectual and practical support for being a ‘bad’ muslim. Indeed we need to say is essential for a rational civilised muslim to be a ‘bad’ (ie non-salafist) muslim.

To give a cautionary tale: in 1994 I had a discussion with a Bosnian guy. He said “I never actually thought of myself as a muslim. I just thought of myself as Yugoslavian. But then when my uncle was killed by the cetnics for being a muslim, I realised I was a muslim and I was not really going to be given a choice in the matter by the Serbs. So I started figuring out what it was to be a muslim.”

Orr and de Havilland are technically correct, but do not mistake the views of the five to ten percent of the muslim world who are secular and “bad” enough muslims to be acceptable to a civilized society with the billions who are not. This is where attention to Harris pays off. Read the polling, read the Koran. Understand that the only “extremists” in the muslim camp are the tiny secularized minority who aren’t in favor of murdering virtually everyone on earth and building the Caliphate on their bones. It is a matter of scale. What westerners view as “moderate” Islam is to actual Islam as the Unitarian Church is to Christianity. What we view as “extremist” Islam is in fact the accepted view of the vast, overwhelming majority of muslims, their imams, scholars and leaders.

No we are not just ‘technically’ correct. I think you will find that both he and I are talking about muslims in the west and ones who are actively opposed to political Islam. Note where he wrote:

All these religions are ridiculous anachronisms. But religious temperaments, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish or other, are all tempered and focused through the lens of western secularism which takes the crazy out of all of them… and they all have some form of crazy in them.

And where I note the remarks of a Bosnian (i.e. European) Muslim. And note the Peshmerga and YPG (Kurds) are the ones doing much of the more effective shooting and killing of political Muslims at the moment (not that there are not Turkish backed politically Islamic Kurds I might add). I assure you that if you take a poll in Sarajevo (unless things have changed out of all recognition since I was there) and ask if local Muslims favour death for apostasy, or indeed ask the same question in Erbil or what is left of Kurdish held Kobane, very few will say they do.

So yes, millions in Indonesia and Pakistan and Saudi and Iran may indeed be a ‘problem’. I agree entirely with Sam Harris’ thesis in generality. But also as Harris says, there are millions of Muslims in the west and indeed elsewhere who are very selective (‘bad’) Muslims. The two notions are not contradictory. But I agree with Orr that the very notion of a ‘moderate’ Muslim is not an absurdity. That said, I think many of the people held up as ‘moderates’ by the political class in the west are manifestly not moderate by any reasonable definition, they are just true believers with good PR, that the multiculti elite choose to believe for their own entirely political ends.

But polls about social issues are a very unreliable predictor of behavior. And the Koran might have lots of horrible stuff but read any holy book and you will find all sorts of nonsense there too.

I think you are mixing up two things; the memetics of a medieval, poor, ignorant society with the religion practiced there. Now I don’t think that these two things are independent. When you actively choose not to educate half your population you are going to have on average a much less educated society.

But in many respects, many of the aspects of Islamic societies have very direct parallels with medieval Europe and the Christianity that was practiced there. They of course have their peculiarities, some rather horrible on both sides, but the behavior comes from the lack of options cooked up in a society dominated by a particular religious culture.

The real mistake here is the idea that democracy is the solution to the middle east problem. It is not. The solution is money. Money in the form of trade. McDonalds and Barbie, exchanged for the many great goods that these societies can provide. How about call centers in Fallujah, or offshoring software development to Tehran?

It isn’t easy to overcome the obstacles to that type of trade with the Middle East for a whole host of reasons. But that should have been our goal, not democracy. After all many people in many places don’t even want democracy, however, pretty universally everyone wants a big screen TV, and a new car.

The way to have people stop valuing life so cheaply is to have them realize that their own life is valuable, that they can contribute value and that they can receive decent remuneration for their efforts. Of course every society has crazy nut jobs who despite their success and wealth still want to fly planes into buildings.

The way to eliminate the magical thinking of religion is to replace it with the equally magical productiveness of science and free markets. Allow people to find hope in this life, and they will be less dependent on hope in the next life.

And that is true whether you are a 14th century peasant in rural France, or a 21st century peasant in rural Indonesia.

Sooner or later good nice Muslims are faced with the alternative of doing X or betray8ing Islam.

Without any other belief system (and Kurdish Nationalism is a belief system [indeed TWO belief systems – for there is Marxist Kurdish Nationalism, and non Marxist Kurdish Nationalism] – although some Kurds no longer follow it, indeed that number is increasing) doing X is the more likely possibility.

As my “Uncle Bill” (who severed in what is now Iraq before World War II) pointed out to me – your friend for years (close personal friend) could try and cut your throat (without any warning). nor should this be unexpected – after all it was what his beliefs call him to do.

Someone may go drinking and dancing (or whatever) – but, without an alternative belief system, Islam will always be there – offering him the road to respect in this world and salvation in the next (via the blood of his infidel friend – NOT out of cruelty, your friend may deeply regret what he has to do, but as a sign that he has rejected corruption and is coming to Islam). Indeed someone who does not have infidel friends (who is deeply enmeshed in tribal and clan affairs, may actually be LESS likely to behave in this way than a “Westernised” person – after all the person deeply involved in tribal and clan affairs has no “Western corruption” to repent of, and has alternative to “pure” Islam – those tribal and clan affairs are the alternative, and his clan and tribal elders are an alternative source of authority to the Koran and so on. Sadly young Muslims in the West often have no clan and tribal elders (or do not recognise them) – so they fall back (in a time of mental or emotional crises) on “pure” Islam.

One can not expect people to ignore a great world belief system (that has lasted over a thousand years) without some real alternative being offered to them.

And a few drinks in the club (or whatever) is not a real alternative belief system.

> One can not expect people to ignore a great world belief system (that has lasted over a thousand years) without some real alternative being offered to them.

I absolutely agree.

> And a few drinks in the club (or whatever) is not a real alternative belief system.

I doubt anybody is proposing that. However, a world in which you can advance your own agenda, achieve your own goals, build wealth, comfort and enjoyment for you and your family, and buy health and a long life, is indeed a very attractive belief system.

I doubt anybody is proposing that. However, a world in which you can advance your own agenda, achieve your own goals, build wealth, comfort and enjoyment for you and your family, and buy health and a long life, is indeed a very attractive belief system.

Exactly so. As I have grown older, I find myself increasingly disdainful of anything that depends on an “overarching narrative” that everyone has to buy into. Real life does not actually work that way, and indeed the more adaptive smorgasbord of modern western civilisation really does provide the way around that. Now all we need to do is impress upon people that this is *not* the same thing the multiculturalists are pushing. Indeed the opposite for multiculturalism is not monoculturalism, it is a critically rational and deeply judgemental analysis of all culture, of the sort the multiculturalists are terrified of.

I tend to view the word ‘Islamophobia’ as a bogus term designed designed by cowards to pathologize and ridicule the critique of a totalizing religious ideology. However, when I read ridiculous comments such as this it reminds me that sometimes the fear of Muslims is indeed irrational.

I lived in East London for a few years and have known many self described Muslims, the idea that they all secretly desired to see me decapitated utterly absurd.

I think there is little doubt that (in the West at least) Mr & Mrs Muslim are not slavering with the desire to kill millions. Mr & Mrs Nazi Germany probably did not vote for Adolf because they wanted the world set on fire and would have been horrified if they could have foreseen the consequences of their actions. That does not mean that they would have stood up in the middle of a Nuremberg rally to demand that national socialism change its evil ways. As for Mr and Mrs Muslim–well nobody in Islam gives a rats backside about what Mrs Muslim thinks. And if Mr m tries to speak out at the mosque–allowing the moral courage to do so-not that easy to find anywhere in this world-all the leaders have to do is point out that it is all in the manual as Paul Marks rightly says.

What the masses want is often of little importance once the leadership has got a head of steam going. And they have.

What the masses want is often of little importance once the leadership has got a head of steam going. And they have.

Yes indeed, which is why it is important to do what Sam Harris is doing and not tolerate the Disney version of the Koran being pushed by some people. Come out and say that you MUST cherry pick Islam to partake of civilised affluent modernity. It is about providing the intellectual space for people to openly say that, by not tolerating the Ben Afflicks of this world shouting down anyone who dares to point out the truth about “death for apostates”

Mr. Ecks beat me to it. There was a study not many years ago postulating that normally only something like 10% of the general population in any given country or society is ideologically and politically non-neutral or active. Most people do have their moral convictions to this or that extent, but they normally do not bother with the Larger Questions of Life, as it were. They may or may not believe in this or that deity, or this or that ideology (unless explicitly asked to consider it), but for the most part they could not care less, at least compared to their real worries – such as providing a better material life for themselves and their loved ones. They are precisely as Perry and Fraser describe the moderate Muslims they have come to know – and that is as true in Muslim communities as well as in any other, at least in the West.

But as Mr. Ecks above correctly points out, often times they are not the ones who count, and such times, more often than not, happen to be times of uncertainty, times of crises – usually arising from a failing economy, and often leading to wide-spread violence, such as armed conflicts of various sorts, or “mere” rampant crime and general lawlessness. Or even just general ideological and political confusion.

That is when those 10% tend to spring into action, both in the realm of ideology (changing “metacontexts”), and in the realm of physical participation in various activities, including violent ones. In Muslim communities these 10% (or whatever the real number may be) became Al-Qaeda activists, and are now ISIS supporters. In white secular communities these are the Occupy types on the Left, and the Tea Party activists on the Right. Etc.

In short, just to remind everyone: contrary to what some of us had been told at school, Bolsheviks did not enjoy wide-spread popular support of the Russian population.

@Alisa
> But as Mr. Ecks above correctly points out, often times they are not the ones who count,

Yes, but to be clear, my objection was the ridiculous characterization of all Muslims as the cartoon version. My objection is that unless you clearly understand the problem you can’t find a solution. Every society has its measure of crazy nut jobs, whether that is under a patina of religious fervor, gangland loyalty or simply psychotic rage. The first step to dealing with this problem is to realize that the good guys always massively outweigh the bad guys, and have them generate a meta-context where they say “you losers aren’t going to ruin my cushy life.” The real tragedy of the Muslim community in the west isn’t that they all want to cut off our heads — they don’t — the real tragedy is that they don’t have the balls to stand up and say — “you thugs don’t speak for me.” And that truly is something that we all should be demanding from them.

And that truly is something that we all should be demanding from them.

Exact-o-mundo! And we need to be creating the intellectual and practical background that makes it possible for them to do that, as opposed to the DISASTROUS approach of pretending the Koran was actually written by Walt Disney and those silly salafists are not real muslims. Fuck no. That is NOT doing the ‘average Muslim’ any favours!

That is why I admire the likes of Sam Harris for doing what he is doing. The fact it makes an intellectual pygmy like Ben Afflick apoplectic is just confirmation that this is the correct course of action.

“I assure you that if you take a poll in Sarajevo (unless things have changed out of all recognition since I was there) and ask if local Muslims favour death for apostasy, or indeed ask the same question in Erbil or what is left of Kurdish held Kobane, very few will say they do.”

Kosovars and Kurds are minorities, so they tend to develop the religion of a minority, very tolerant and broad-minded. Like Christianity in the Roman era. When they achieve political power and majority, they turn ugly, like christianity in the midieval era. Your mistake remains comparing the religion as it is practiced in tiny minorities in the West with how it is practiced everywhere else in the world.

Our goal should be to create teh circumstances for Islam to be a minority faith everywhere. Just like christianity is in most nations. Divorced from political power and the ability to enforce dogma with military might, religions tend to fracture and split, diffusing their power.

Bosnian muslims are a majority in Sarajevo and much of Bosnia. Likewise Kurds are a majority in most part of traditional Kurdistan.

Your mistake remains comparing the religion as it is practiced in tiny minorities in the West with how it is practiced everywhere else in the world.

Then you misunderstand what is being said. We are indeed talking about muslims in the west… and several other places. And we are also agreeing with Sam Harris that in places like Pakistan and Iran and Indonesia etc that it is perfectly mainstream to accept like killing apostates.

Our goal should be to create teh circumstances for Islam to be a minority faith everywhere. Just like christianity is in most nations. Divorced from political power and the ability to enforce dogma with military might, religions tend to fracture and split, diffusing their power.

Well yes. The idea is to create an environment that does not gloss over the intrinsic problems with Islam. And given that in reality ‘most muslims’ in the west, and many muslims elsewhere, are not advocate of the salafist or one of the also nasty hardcore Shiite versions, there is actually a rather large body of non-lunatic muslims who can possibly be reached if only our political masters would stop with the bullshit Koran-by-Disney crap.

You know I was thinking about this whole “democracy” verses “freedom” thing. It reminded me of the occasion, about ten years ago, when I became a US citizen.

One of the questions asked is “what is the most important right an American has.” The officially correct answer is “the right to vote”. But that is so wrong on so many levels. It is the apotheosizing of government gone crazy.

The right to vote is certainly a fairly weak guard against the most egregious forms of tyranny, but the other rights, the right to free speech, the right to be free of interference in trade and business, the right of free association, the right to a fair enforcement of the laws and contracts, and the right to protect yourself with suitable weapons that are the most important rights. In fact it is the right to be mostly free of government that is the most important right, which is an interesting contrast to the view that the right to support a government from a very limited set of choices is somehow the most important right.

Of course you can understand why government sponsored tests would advocate things to favor government itself. But it is a curious thing how much this is turned on its head. After all, the very rights that are important are the ones under constant attack by the government with a supposed mandate from the vote.

For what it is worth, this is the one question on the citizenship test I got “wrong”. I couldn’t suck it up to genuflect on that response. Just call it my own little American Revolution.

Fraser, I did understand your point and it was a fair one – i.e. saying ‘all Muslims are potential terrorists’ or something to that effect is beyond simplistic and really not helpful, to put it mildly. However, the corollary to my previous comment is that in such times of crises, those moderates of whatever ethnic, cultural or religious affiliations, nominal as they may be, begin feeling compelled to take sides, to reexamine their “fundamentals” and their first principles. That is when more people may become more politically active, or may “find god”, or communism (or libertarianism or objectivism, if we are lucky enough), or whatever other ideology, theist or not, that may cross their path. And the thing is that someone who was born a Christian, or a Jew, or a Muslim, is at least likely (albeit not with anything approaching total certainty) to rediscover the religion of his or her forefathers. And when they do, they are more likely than not to go straight to the fundamentals of that particular religion. And if and when they do, it really does matter whether they find Jesus or Mohammed. Paul is absolutely correct on that. That’s just human nature, although again, there are variations and exceptions and plain old surprises.

“And that truly is something that we all should be demanding from them.”

Exact-o-mundo! And we need to be creating the intellectual and practical background that makes it possible for them to do that, as opposed to the DISASTROUS approach of pretending the Koran was actually written by Walt Disney and those silly salafists are not real muslims. Fuck no. That is NOT doing the ‘average Muslim’ any favours!

Indeed. We really are not obligated to take it as far as converting them to Christianity, as Paul Marks seemingly would have it (although I really see no harm in that either), but we should be providing them with a moral, philosophical and political alternative to the terrible legacy of Mohammed.

I’m sure that those commenting here to the effect that there exist millions of secular (“bad”) Muslims not slavering to saw off the heads of infidels are correct. But Tarrou is also correct when he says about Muslims “when they achieve political power and majority, they turn ugly.” There is some segment of any society which desires power over its neighbors. To say that millions of secular Muslims simply want to get on with their lives is no different than observing that in western societies the vast majority of people have no desire for political power. Nonetheless, there is a persistent minority, in both groups, which does. And unless the dominant culture (be it determined by some religious book, a constitution, or simply tradition) has mechanisms to rein in such people, they will render their entire society toxic. (A few bad apples really does spoil the entire barrel.) And that is the central problem with Islam: their fundamental religious texts do absolutely nothing to rein in its worst elements; in fact, they actively encourage the worst excesses.

As far as I can tell there is not a single Muslim-dominated country in the world with a functioning economic system or a culture worthy of respect. It would seem that Muslims can only function as minorities within a larger society which keeps its worst elements in check. Otherwise the 10% or so who are power-mad will dominate the others. Muslims are like plutonium: when they achieve critical mass they detonate. The objective of western society must be to keep them from achieving that density. And at present we are doing a lousy job of it.

I agree with Perry on this, not all muslims are as one on hating the West. That said OBL and ISIS are not fighting Western christian civilization, Muslims have been contesting the christian West for 14 centuries and have been doing just fine for the most part. Its the secular west that bugs them. They are terrified of Islam becoming marginalized in the Middle East in the same way that Christianity has become marginalized in the West. The ISIS solution is to fight secularism and anything not ISIS in the Middle East. The genius of OBL was to realize that the way to prevent secularism in the Muslim world is to destroy it in the West, and the way to do that is to get us to destroy western secularism ourselves. So far his long term plan seems to be working.

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